RoA: Blade of Destiny - Remake To Be Released in June

June 6th, 2013, 03:40

UIG Entertainment and Attic Entertainment have released a gameplay trailer for Realms of Arkania – Blade of Destiny.

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Munich, Germany– 5 th June 2013: UIG Entertainment, a leading German publisher, and Attic Entertainment have today released a brand new gameplay trailer for Realms of Arkania– Blade of Destiny, set to release at the end of June on PC with a recommended retail price of&pound;14.99/€19.99.

Developed by Austrian developer Crafty Games,Realms of Arkania– Blade of Destiny is a one-to-one remake of the 1992 original, adored by a generation of Role Players and one of the most successful and legendary German RPG’s of the 1990’s. Featuring between 20 and 80 hours of game time, depending on playing style, as well as being in full real-time 3D for the first time, Realms of Arkania– Blade of Destiny has been fully reimagined for a 21 st century RPG gaming audience.

Originally Posted by JDR13
RoA is of the few classic crpg series that I've never played at all. This looks great though. How did Blade of Destiny stack up against the sequels?

I would say that the RoA series suffered from "modernization".
The first game has quite basic graphics, no animated sequences (besides of the intro which was done by a third party which also explains why the orcs are green in the intro instead of brown as they are in this universe).
With the second part this changed a little bit. They implemented 3D graphics and you were able to switch between step by step or free movement, some more cutscenes. The cost? The area it took place was much smaller. I think there were only like 5 towns or so where you could actually walk in (instead of the like 50 in the first part) the other ones were text only. It still was quite open, and while it featured some stuff aside from the main story, it was far less as in the first part.
Blade of Destiny you could call a pure sandbox. You had to bring together the majority of pices from a map. And they were spread all out over the region and hardly connected to each other. When you get which pice was up to you. And there were also lots of places and dungeons not remotely related to the story at all. Not the case with the second part.
This also reflects in the music btw: The first game has music on the very "basic" level, originally blips and bleeps which were then remastered for the CD version (which is also used in the remake as you can hear in the trailer) The music seems more "basic" but has very clear melodies which burn into your brain.
The second game's music became less "sticky" but more atmospheric.

The 3rd game of the series is the logical follow up. While it's still a great game, it continues the path chosen before. Shadows over Rive is purely linear. You cannot travel at all (no travel map). The regions you enter are all done in full 3d. Lots of text was voice overed. The music is very atmospheric but does not stick in your mind at all.

In my opinion the first game was the best, and then directly followed by the second. The third one wasn't bad but follows in some distance.

The second game was a good mix of "modernization" at that time and "basic" sandbox elements.

I have only played the third one, so I am really looking forward to play this, it will be new to me. I hope the short development time is really down to not having to actually create content, just implementing it in a new engine.

I don't really need new content in the first game. If it was the thrid I would probably agree.

The first game has tons of content already. Lots of dungeons and stuff you don't really need to go to. And of course back then it was easy to produce more of this content, because besides of text it was mostly empty.

The first game has lots of dungeons where you just run around empty corridors. There are no chairs, tables or such in graphics. If there is something like that, they tell you via text. And if you are going into a fight, you switch into a battle screen anyways. It would already be tons of work just to bring these dungeons to todays standards. If they really implement all of these dungeons, then I don't think truely new stuff is needed.

Just to demonstrate what I mean here:
Check: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL2yPK6WdNU (from 2:00 onwards for a few seconds).
While this dungeon is "A Cove", it does look exactly the same when being on a pirate ship or somewhere else. Most of the content is transported by text in this game. Will be lots of effort to transport all this into todays standards.
Or to put it in different words: You could say that if they put Shadows over Riva and Blade of Destiny into the same technology, so that they would look the same side by side, you would realize that Riva is not more of a fraction of what Blade of Destiny is.

But that is of course, because back then they didn't need to graphically visualize all the details and so it was easier to produce content.

Played the first one and parts of the second and third, and must agree that the first one was fantastic. I am looking forward to this. Does anyone know where we can get more information on the game, like an english forum or something.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
Just to demonstrate what I mean here:
Check: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL2yPK6WdNU (from 2:00 onwards for a few seconds).
While this dungeon is "A Cove", it does look exactly the same when being on a pirate ship or somewhere else. Most of the content is transported by text in this game. Will be lots of effort to transport all this into todays standards.
Or to put it in different words: You could say that if they put Shadows over Riva and Blade of Destiny into the same technology, so that they would look the same side by side, you would realize that Riva is not more of a fraction of what Blade of Destiny is.

But that is of course, because back then they didn't need to graphically visualize all the details and so it was easier to produce content.

While I hope that they will have a few different tilesets for dungeons etc., I'd be fine with them keeping the text descriptions.